THE CLEANSING OF SOUTH CAROLINA : Football Team Gets New Coach, New Image

COLUMBIA, S.C. —  There is a song being played on local radio stations and it is growing in popularity. It is a heroic tale of a man coming down from the mountains to lead a people out of darkness.

Or, in this case, a university.

The song is “Sparky Rock” and the subject is Sparky Woods, new football coach at the University of South Carolina.

“Down from the mountains in the Appalachian land, “Came a young coach with the future in his hand. “ . . . To lead the fighting Gamecocks on to solid ground.”

A heavy burden for anyone, but considering where this school has been, solid ground is long way off.

King Dixon II, that wonderfully-named athletic director, is not the sort to let pointed questions break his rhetorical stride. Dixon attacks the subject head-on.

“Traditionally, South Carolina has been involved with controversy, regrettably,” Dixon said.

Just as regrettably for South Carolina, the controversy never seems far removed. It has been almost a year since former player Tommy Chaikin sold his story to Sports Illustrated for $4,500, telling of widespread steroid use among the football players at South Carolina, especially from the years 1984-87.

Chaikin estimated that more than 50% of the team had used the muscle-building drugs, with the knowledge of the coaching staff. He also alleged that more than a third of the team had used cocaine.

The article led to a grand jury investigation, which eventually led to the sentencing earlier this month of three former South Carolina coaches who were found guilty of having used and distributed steroids in the school’s athletic department. Several Gamecock players were given immunity in return for their testimony.

Although steroid use might not have made the Gamecocks unique in college football, Chaikin’s allegations certainly made the team infamous. Students from opposing schools chanted, “Steroids! Steroids!” in the stands at South Carolina games. The school was thoroughly embarrassed.

That was not the extent of the trouble, however.

Last season, players were arrested for possession of narcotics, were involved in campus fights and suffered academic difficulties.

On the field, circumstances were not much better. The Gamecocks started well, going 6-0 and climbing to eighth in the national rankings, but lost three of their last five games. Their season ended with a 34-10 defeat by Indiana in the Liberty Bowl.

The cruelest blow, however, fell Feb. 5, when Coach Joe Morrison died of a heart attack at 51, after having just played racquetball. Morrison, a popular coach, had been known as the Man in Black and Black Magic, after his habit of wearing black clothes on the sidelines during games.

Suddenly, Dixon, who had been on the job less than three months, had to deal with that tragedy and hire a new coach. He chose Woods, from tiny Appalachian State in Boone, N.C.

Much is expected of Woods, 35. Foremost among his mandates is to scrub clean the image of the program he inherited. Already on the job six months, Woods knows the difficulty in this.

“We didn’t develop this reputation overnight,” Woods said. “We are not going to get rid of it overnight.”

Woods has begun on an upbeat note. The Gamecocks won their season opener at home against Duke, 27-21, in a game dedicated to Morrison’s memory, then came back last Saturday and tied Virginia Tech on a late field goal. But Woods is in a delicate position: How much of Morrison’s tradition should he preserve, and what should he exorcise.

Reporters regularly stream through Columbia, seeking to learn how the team and school have coped with their renegade image. The questions have never stopped, but few involved in the athletic program today were around during the height of the scandal.

“Eighty-five percent of these guys weren’t even here then,” said Gamecock quarterback Todd Ellis, who was here during the Chaikin episode. “I feel sorry for them, always having to answer for people before them.”

Part of that can be explained by personnel turnover. South Carolina has had three athletic directors in 12 months. Woods brought seven coaches with him from Appalachian State and the athletic department has a new look from head to toe.

Woods has even changed the uniforms. Morrison had 10 to 12 uniform combinations of the school colors, garnet and black.

Woods has simplified things, a constant theme of his. Gone are the seven stripes on the helmets. Gone are the stripes on the pants. Home jerseys will be garnet with white, and road uniforms will be all white. Everyone will wear black shoes. He has taken both the “Gamecocks” off the front of the jersey and the player name off the back.

“We are a team first,” he said.

Woods said his most difficult challenge with the team has not been on the field, where there exists a common language, but off the field, where common ground is hard to find.

“I’m more concerned about keeping trouble away from my players than I am my players getting in trouble,” Woods said. “I’m interested in the company the players keep.”

That interest is apparent to the players, who have had to get used to assistant coaches dropping in unannounced.

“We’re very popular people around here,” quarterback Ellis said. “If I had a nickel for every time someone tried to get me into trouble, I’d be rich. Here, if you screw up one time it makes headlines. But we realize that it’s our own fault. We put ourselves under the microscope.”

In March, several players were involved in a scuffle at a fraternity dance. Woods called his team together.

“This ain’t going to be no Oklahoma,” he said.

Woods has introduced what some here believe to be extraordinary measures to restore discipline in the football program. Morrison was an on-field taskmaster but not a hard-liner off it. The former New York Giant running back was, according to one current player, “a man’s man.”

“Joe had a very professional approach,” Dixon said. “He treated them like grown-up men. There are many young men who can handle that responsibility, some can’t.”

Woods let the team know immediately that his philosophy is different.

It began with a policy that became instantly unpopular. Woods reasoned that if his players could be made to get up in the morning, they might be persuaded to go to class. To that end, he established a mandatory breakfast check-in, with players required to get up between 7 and 8:30 and eat breakfast.

The first day, there were 28 no-shows. They were gotten out of bed the next day and made to run stadium steps. The day after that, there were 17 no-shows. They also ran stairs. Now, breakfast tables are full.

“I don’t think this is too much,” Woods said. “Most successful people in this world are up by 8:30. We hope that since they are already up, they just might go on to class.”

In fact, he requires class attendance from his players. “If they don’t go, we get ‘em up and run ‘em,” he said.

Woods calls his punishments “Gamecock reminders” and metes them out liberally.

Another unwelcome addition, from the players’ point of view, is the curfew--11 p.m. Thursday and Friday nights.

“I think a lot of the players would like to see the curfew change,” said Scott Windsor, one of the team’s co-captains. “Coach Woods says he wants us to go to him with problems. This will be one of them.”

The same month that players got into a fight at the fraternity dance, junior nose tackle Tim High was arrested on drug charges. His scholarship was revoked.

Drug users don’t get off lightly here, which was not always the case. Last March, then-athletic director Bob Marcum was fired after a task force determined that the school had not conducted random drug testing of athletes since the spring of 1986. Team physician Paul Akers also was fired.

The school now has what it calls a wellness program, in which everyone participates--athletes, trainers and coaches. Tests are conducted for controlled substances, anabolic steroids and alcohol.

Each week, even during summer school, random samples are taken from 10% of the athletes. Those to be tested are given four hours’ notice and failure to appear for the test is treated as a positive.

A positive test in the first instance brings counseling and notification of parents. The second instance calls for suspension of 1/11th of the season. With a third positive, the athlete loses his scholarship.

In the case of cocaine, with the second positive, the athlete is out of the program.

Is that too harsh?

“No, it’s what’s required to play at the University of South Carolina,” Dixon said.

Some of the incidents have been more embarrassing than serious. Among those was the arrest of three players a week before the start of fall practice. The players, offensive guard Calvin Stephens, nose tackle Bobby Brown and tight end Trent Simpson, were arrested for shoplifting.

According to Woods, the three players were shopping in a clothing store in which a former teammate worked. The former teammate told the players he would give them a discount. One player brought about $85 worth of clothing to the register and was told it would be, “Five dollars and a quarter,” Woods said.

When the player questioned the figure, the former player is said to have replied, “Give me the money and get out of here before you get me in trouble.”

The three were put in a pretrial intervention program and are required to perform community service instead of going to trial.

Woods was aware that there would be much scrutiny, whatever decision he made regarding the players.

“I know that the most popular decision would be to kick the players off the team,” he said. “But I’m not here to do the popular thing, I’m here to do the right thing. I told them they were thieves, that they made a split-second decision that was wrong. But I decided to keep them on the team.”

Woods has kept those players on a curfew and has them run every morning at 5:30 for “a long, long time.”

Dixon said the shoplifting incident hurt him personally.

“Each of those kids knew we need to have no situations that would bring discredit to the university,” he said. “Every one of them knows that any confrontation they get involved in is going to bring discredit to us all. We can’t have any more of that.”

But there may be more. On Aug. 16, the school discovered that it was in violation of National Collegiate Athletic Assn. rules regarding its method of dispensing tickets to high school coaches. The school has changed its policy and no penalties are expected.

The school has been there before, however. In 1987, the basketball program was put on probation.

Another possible controversy for the school is JeVena Morrison’s claim for worker’s compensation on the grounds that her husband’s fatal heart attack was caused by job stress.

The state Worker’s Compensation Commission recently allowed Mrs. Morrison’s attorneys two more months to prepare their case. If the commission rules in her favor, she can claim as much as $160,000 from the university and its insurance carrier.

Ellis, who was close to Morrison, said that the late coach was deeply affected by Chaikin’s allegations.

“He bottled it all up,” Ellis said. “I think it all led to some stress. He held it all in.”

Ellis said the entire team was affected by the controversy and attention.

“We were a struggling football team on the field, and then you’ve got (reporters) at the gate and guys putting cameras over the fence at the practice field.”

Windsor, who was also on the team with Chaikin, said he tried not to let the distractions bother him.

“But I get tired of hearing it all the time,” Windsor said. “It just gets really old real quick.”

Through it all is the steady calm of Woods.

“The man they brought in to clean up Dodge City,” he says, laughing.

He is convinced that, with the support of the athletic department, he can turn things around.

“I think they want to win,” Woods said, referring broadly to the school administration and South Carolina’s patient but fervent fans. “But they want it done right. They want it to be clean. They don’t want the kind of scars we’ve had. I don’t want to be affected by all that.

“I don’t want to win at all costs. I want them to know that I can’t wave a magic wand and make it all go away.”